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Back to article: FITZEDWARD HALL (1825-1901)

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HALL, FITZEDWARD (1825-1901), American Orientalist, was born in Troy, New York, on the 21st of March 1825. He graduated with the degree of civil engineer from the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute at Troy in 1842, and entered Harvard in the class of 1846; just before his class graduated he left college and went to India in search of a runaway brother. In January r85o he was appointed tutor, and in 1853 professor of Sanskrit and English, in the government college at Benares; and in 1855 was made inspector of public instruction in Ajmere-Merwara and in 1856 in the Central Provinces. He settled in England in 1862 and received the appointment to the chair of Sanskrit, Hindustani and Indian jurisprudence in King's College, London, and to the librarianship of the India Office. He died at Marlesford, Suffolk, on the 1st of February 1901. Hall was the first American to edit a Sanskrit text, the Vishnupurana; his library of a thousand Oriental MSS. he gave to Harvard University.
His works include: in Sanskrit, Atmabodha (1852), Sankhyapravachana (1856), Saryasiddhanta (1859), Vasavadattu (1859), Sankhyasara (1862) and Dasarupa (1865); in Hindi, Ballantynes' Hindi Grammar (1868) and a Reader (1870); on English philology, Recent. Exemplifications of False Philology (1872), attacking Richard Grant White, Modern English (1873), ` On English Adjectives in -able, with Special Reference to Reliable " (Am. Jour. Philology, 1877), Doctor Indoctus (188o).